Today I’m tired because last night I dreamed. A lot. As in I kept waking up from dreams and I can still remember them.

The hodge-podge of people who gather into my dreams amaze me. Somehow security guards from my Dubai life interact with teachers from Missouri and children from my childhood. And they are smooshed together in a confusing web of normalcy during the night.

In my dreams, I’m usually hunting for something, running from something, or in a car careening off a spiral roadway, flying through the sky and headed towards certain death. Last night I could feel the car frame creaking as if ready to bust apart just before we were to land on the top of a rain-forest. I awakened abruptly, wondering if I was going to actually survive this time, because maybe the trees would cushion me from an explosive end of life.

Many times I’ve dreamed that I’m back in Poppenhausen, Germany, trying to retrieve our family’s belongings from the attic in the barn. During this dream, I can actually see real toys and outfits my children owned when we lived there. Mickey Mouse blankets are pristine after 30 years of non-use. Like a museum, I usually enjoy this dream, eagerly finding missing items and preparing to take them with me. Sometimes in this dream I tell myself that I am dreaming the same dream and that it isn’t a real experience. But then I strive to stay asleep, and argue that it could be real and I want to search through more boxes and containers to see precious artifacts from the 1990’s.

One dream I dreamed twice, several years apart. Like a choose-your-own-ending book, the beginning of the dream started the same way, but the endings were drastically different. The first time, I was leaving a grocery store, cart packed full of food and my youngest children, Jen and Philip. As I turned to take Amy’s hand (their older sister’s hand), the cart started rolling away from us, quickly! As I set chase, I was torn between keeping Amy safe or catching the cart hurtling down the parking lot towards train tracks and an approaching train. Trying to do both, I awakened terrified, just knowing something terrible was going to happen but not wanting to know which child I would choose to save. The second time I dreamed this dream, I knew what horrible event was about to unfold, so I strapped all three kids in the cart, kept a firm hold on the cart handle, and made it to my car with the train siren sounding, but not because of us. We were safe, and I was relieved.

Dreams interest me because they are so odd yet so common. I wonder what the brain is doing when it jams situations, emotions, people, and emergencies into one frame during the night. What is my mind trying to solve? Sometimes I can conjecture a plausible reason for the dream, but it’s like being a Google-level psychiatrist, assuming a lot and knowing nothing! Some dreams I luxuriate in while others have wakened me in real anger or tears, which is difficult to understand during that cross-over time between sleep and not asleep. Sometimes I’m like, “Whew! Thank God that wasn’t real!” And others, I’m like, “Darn-it! That would have been amazing!”

As interesting as dreams are, I hope tonight that I sleep soundly and awaken as if not a single dream happened. This dreaming and remembering stuff all night long is exhausting!